Photo: ©Tim Griffith

At 1,070 feet high, the recently completed Salesforce Tower is the tallest building in San Francisco. The $1.1 billion skyscraper opened in May 2018 as part of a plan to revitalize the city’s Transbay area. The tower stands above the Salesforce Transit Center, which opened to the public in August.

Salesforce Tower incorporates nearly 500,000 square feet of Guardian’s SunGuard AG 50 coating on both flat and curved clear glass, giving occupants access to views and daylighting.

Guardian regional architectural manager east Leigh Anne Mays worked closely with Pelli Clarke Pelli Architects on the project. Benson Industries was the glazing contractor. Tecnoglass S.A., based in Colombia, fabricated the flat glass while Sunglass, based in Italy, fabricated the bent glass.

The complex design features curved glass on all four corners of the building that taper inward toward the crown of the building.

Photo: ©Tim Griffith

“The taper and curved corners required complex, conical bends in the glass. Guardian SunGuard high performance low-E coated glass has a long history of helping design teams successfully execute bent glass applications, and the team worked closely together to execute the architect’s vision,” says Mays. “There was a lot of careful thought and design work necessary to successfully bring to life the bent glass design and the resulting overall look of this building, which is already proving to be a landmark in the San Francisco skyline.”

Communication, coordination and timing were the major challenges Guardian faced on the project.

“Those elements were compounded on Salesforce Tower because the team was globally managing an extremely high volume of glass. Guardian Glass was shipping to two different fabricators and dealing with multiple time zones,” says Mays.